Hello,
Thanks for sharing your profile and story, and a decent amount of detail to help us understand your situation and experience with your startups. Yes you come from a competitive background (Indian males with engineering degrees and solid GMATs
), but your extensive entrepreneurial experiences and achievements of course do help you stand out from many of that crowd. Your job in the admissions process is to showcase what makes you who YOU are, professionally, and even personally, and allow the admissions committee to get to know you and assess what you'll bring to the class. If you can do that in a compelling way, I would be hopeful that you'd be considered at a top 7 school. Be sure that the full explanation/story of how things developed is included in your essays/apps, so that the readers can fully understand, as it's possible that the full scenario may not come through on the resume. The impact you've made on individuals as well as other startups is admirable and worth showcasing.
I would not worry much about the fact that you did not need venture funding etc; tell your story and the hows and whys and what you learned from it, and then don't forget the FUTURE-looking part of your story is also important to admissions---i.e. you do need to make the case for why you need the MBA and how it will help with your future goals within most of these apps.
The one part I may not have followed fully was your juggling the VP Marketing role with your startup, in terms of full and part-time etc? So to your q about waiting another year and gaining more experience, it may depend upon that and what you anticipate accomplishing in the coming year. R2 is just over 2 months away, so it may be tough to fit in say 7 apps before then, but you could fit in a couple if you so choose. Re: GMAT, it depends upon whether you feel you left any points on the table and want to give it a shot... I wouldn't say it's critical and would likely be tough to do for R2 this year, but can't argue with sure, higher is always better
at these very top schools, so if you did wind up waiting until next year, and wanted to give it a shot 'just in case' that is an option.
If you'd like to send over your resume for a more in-depth discussion, feel free to sign up for a free 30 minute consultation with us at
www.mbamission.com/consult. Good luck either way!